NationStates Jolt Archive

I thought this was very interesting so I just had to post this here

I mentioned to this guy over the internet a quote from Leo Frobenius when he saw Ife art (western Nigeria) that I heared on a BBC program http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/africa/features/storyofafrica/index_section16.shtml
12. The Art of Ife and Benin
An extraordinary cultural flowering which reaches its peak in the twelfth century. And the role of artistic expression in Africa's history.
8:30-9:30

They were pieces of a broken human face .... Here were the remains of a very ancient and fine type of art. These meagre relics were eloquent of a symmetry, a vitality, a delicacy of form directly reminiscent of ancient Greece and a proof that, once upon a time, a race, far superior in strain to the negro, had been settled here
The sample in the middle is an example of Ife art, which is what Frobenius would be looking at
http://s120.photobucket.com/albums/o180/Markellion/th_speech2.jpg

The guy I was talking to was questioning the quote because he read a book where Leo Frobenius later on defended African culture saying "idea of the barbaric Negro is a European invention"

"When they [the first European navigators of the end of the Middle Ages] arrived in the Gulf of Guinea and landed at Vaida, the captains were astonished to find the streets well cared for, bordered for several leagues in length by two rows of trees; for many days they passed through a country of magnificent fields, a country inhabited by men clad in brilliant costumes, the stuff of which they had woven themselves! More to the South in the Kingdom of Congo, a swarming crowd dressed in silk and velvet; great states well ordered, and even to the smallest details, powerful sovereigns, rich industries, -- civilized to the marrow of their bones. And the condition of the countries on the eastern coasts -- Mozambique, for example -- was quite the same.

"What was revealed by the navigators of the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries furnishes an absolute proof that Negro Africa, which extended south of the desert zone of the Sahara, was in full efflorescence which the European conquistadors annihilated as far as they progressed. For the new country of America needed slaves, and Africa had them to offer, hundreds, thousands, whole cargoes of slaves. However, the slave trade was never an affair which meant a perfectly easy conscience, and it exacted a justification; hence one made of the Negro a half-animal, an article of merchandise. And in the same way the notion of fetish (Portuguese feticeiro) was invented as a symbol of African religion. As for me, I have seen in no part of Africa the Negroes worshipping a fetish. The idea of the 'barbarous Negro' is a European invention which has consequently prevailed in Europe until the beginning of this century.

"What these old captains recounted, these chiefs of expeditions -- Delbes,
Marchais, Pigafetta, and all the others, what they recounted is true. It can
be verified. In the old Royal Kunstkammer of Dresden, in the Weydemann
colection of Ulm, in many another 'cabinet of curiosities' of Europe, we
still find West African collections dating from this epoch. Marvellous
plush velvets of an extreme softness, made of the tenderest leaves of a
certain kind of banana plant; stuffs soft and supple, brilliant and delicate,
like silks, woven with the fiber of a raffia, well prepared; powerful javelins
with points encrusted with copper in the most elegant fashion; bows so
graceful in form and so beautifully ornamented that they would do honor
to any museum of arms whatsoever; calabashes decorated with the greatest
taste; sculpture in ivory and wood of which the work shows a very great
deal of application and style.

"And all that came from cuntries of the African periphery, delivered over
after that to slave merchants, . . .

"But when the pioneers of the last century pierced this zone of 'European
civilization' and the wall of protection which had, for the time being
raised behind it -- the wall of protection of the Negro still 'intact' --
they found everywhere the same marvels which the captains had found on
the coast.

"In 1906 when I penetrated into the territory of Kassai-Sankuru, I found
still, villages of which the principle streets were bordered on each side,
for leagues, with rows of palm trees, and of which the houses, decorated
each one in charming fashion, were works of art as well.

"No man who did not carry sumptuous arms of iron or copper, with inlaid
blades and handles covered with serpent skin. Everywhere velvets and
silken stuffs. Each cup, each pipe, each spoon was an object of art
perfectly worthy to be compared to the creations of the Roman European
style. But all this was only the particularly tender and iridescent bloom
which adorns a ripe and marvellous fruit; the gestures, the manners, the
moral code of the entire people, from the little child to the old man,
although they remained within absolutely natural limits, were imprinted
with dignity and grace, in the families of the princes and the rich as in
the vassals and slaves. I know of no northern people who can be compared
with these primitives for unity of civilization. And the peaceful beauty
was carried away by the floods.

"But many men had this experience: the explorers who left the savage and
warrior plateau of the East and South and the North to descend into the
plains of the Congo, of Lake Victoria, of the Ubangi: men such as Speke
and Grant, Livingstone, Cameron, Stanley, Schweinfurth, Junker, de Brazza
-- all of them -- made the same statements: they came from countries
dominated by the rigid laws of the African Ares, and from then on they
penetrated into the countries where peace reigned, and joy in adornment
and in beauty; countries of old civilizations, of ancient styles, of
harmonious styles.

"The revelations of fifteenth and seventeenth century navigators
furnish us with certain proof that Negro Africa, which extended
south of the Sahara desert zone, was still in full bloom, in the
full brilliance of harmonious and well-formed civilizations. In
the last century the superstition ruled that all high culture of
Africa came from Islam. Since then we have learned much, and we
know today that the beautiful turbans and clothes of the Sudanese
folk were already used in Africa before Muhammed was even born or
before Ethiopian culture reached inner Africa. Since then we have
learned that the peculiar organization of the Sudanese states
existed long before Islam and that all of the art of building and
education, of city organization and handwork in Negro Africa, were
thousands of years older than those of Middle Europe.

"Thus in the Sudan old real African warm-blooded culture existed
and could be found in Equatorial Africa, where neither Ethiopian
thought, Hamitic blood, or European civilization had drawn the
pattern. Everywhere when we examine this ancient culture it bears
the same impression. In the great museums -- Trocadero, British
Museum, in Belgium, Italy, Holland, and Germany -- everywhere we
see the same spirit, the same character, the same nature. All of
these separate pieces unite themselves to the same expression and
build a picture equally impressive as that of a collection of the
art of Asia. The striking beauty of the cloth, the fantastic beauty
of the drawing and the sculpture, the glory of the ivory weapons,
the collection of fairy tales equal to the Thousand and One nights,
the Chinese novels, and the Indian philosophy.

"In comparison with such spiritual accomplishments the impression
of the African spirit is easily seen. It is stronger in its folds,
simpler in its richness. Every weapon is simple and practical, not
only in form but fantasy. Every line of carving is simple and strong.
There is nothing that makes a clearer impression of strength, and all
that streams out of the fire and the hut, the sweat and the grease-
treated hides and the animal dung. Everything is practical, strong,
workmanly. This is the character of the African style. When one
approaches it with full understanding, one immediately realizes
that this impression rules all Africa. It expresses itself in the
activity of all Negro people even in their sculpture. It speaks out
of their dances and their masks; out of the understanding of their
religious life, just as out of the reality of their living, their
state building, and their conception of fate. It lives in their
fables, their fairy stories, their wise sayings and their myths.
And once we are forced to this conclusion, then the Egyptian comes
into the comparison. For this discovered culture form of Negro Africa
has the same peculiarity.



Leo Frobenius
Histoire de la Civilisation Africaine
translated by Back and Ermoat
Paris: Gallimard, 1936
6th edition page 56

in

W. E. Burghardt Du Bois
The World and Africa:
An inquiry into the part which Africa has played in world history
New York: Viking Press, 1946
pp. 79, 156

That was interesting. But what's your point? That this historian is being misrepresented somehow?

Not sure about the timing of these quotes, but maybe he simply changed his view because of the evidence?

I mean, I'd like to credit a scientist (even a historian of the 19th or early 20th century) with the ability to do that. But it's a faint hope, I suppose.

Not sure about the timing of these quotes, but maybe he simply changed his view because of the evidence?


Ya that's what I meant, that he changed his mind later on

It struck me as very interesting

"And all that came from cuntries of the African periphery, delivered over after that to slave merchants, . . .
teeheeheehee...he said 'cuntries'.
snigger snigger smirk

Of course Africans were not the only colonized people that were dehumanized. The Irish were called "white negroes" This article also talks about Egyptions and Indians

In India, British rule was justified because the Indians were "heathans" and unfit to rule themselves. In 1813 Lord Hastings wrote: "The Hindoo appears a being nearly limited to mere animal functions and even in them indifferent. Their proficiency and skill in the several lines of occupation to which they are restricted, are little more than the dexterity which any animal with similar conformation but with no higher intellect than a dog, an elephant or a monkey, might be supposed to be capable of attaining."
Lord Cromer, the British Governor of Egypt, wrote that, "Free institutions in the full sense of the term must for generations to come be wholly unsuitable to countries such as India and Egypt...it will probably never be possible to make a Western silk purse out of an Eastern sow's ear."

Of course Africans were not the only colonized people that were dehumanized. The Irish were called "white negroes"
By some people, yes, but hardly universally.
And, at least in the port of Liverpool, Africans/Afro-Caribbeans were -- correspondingly -- referred to colloquially at one time as "smoked Irish"...

This article also talks about Egyptions and Indians
In India, British rule was justified because the Indians were "heathans" and unfit to rule themselves. In 1813 Lord Hastings wrote: "The Hindoo appears a being nearly limited to mere animal functions and even in them indifferent. Their proficiency and skill in the several lines of occupation to which they are restricted, are little more than the dexterity which any animal with similar conformation but with no higher intellect than a dog, an elephant or a monkey, might be supposed to be capable of attaining."
Lord Cromer, the British Governor of Egypt, wrote that, "Free institutions in the full sense of the term must for generations to come be wholly unsuitable to countries such as India and Egypt...it will probably never be possible to make a Western silk purse out of an Eastern sow's ear."

With regard to India _ You're quoting one person, from a time well over a century before Britain gave the country its independence: Taking his views as typical would be a rather sweeping generalisation.
With regard to Egypt _ *(looks at country's political situation)* So, how free are their institutions nowadays?

With regard to India _ You're quoting one person, from a time well over a century before Britain gave the country its independence: Taking his views as typical would be a rather sweeping generalisation.
With regard to Egypt _ *(looks at country's political situation)* So, how free are their institutions nowadays?

That was the point, those were the views of the time

what was the Aryan invasion theory about? the superiority of lighter complexion people over darker

By some With regard to India _ You're quoting one person, from a time well over a century before Britain gave the country its independence: Taking his views as typical would be a rather sweeping generalisation.



"As a contrast to such unabashed contempt for Indian civilization, we find glowing references to India in the writings of pre-colonial Europeans quoted by Swami Vivekananda: "All history points to India as the mother of science and art," wrote William Macintosh. "This country was anciently so renowned for knowledge and wisdom that the philosophers of Greece did not disdain to travel thither for their improvement." Pierre Sonnerat, a French naturalist, concurred: "We find among the Indians the vestiges of the most remote antiquity.... We know that all peoples came there to draw the elements of their knowledge.... India, in her splendour, gave religions and laws to all the other peoples; Egypt and Greece owed to her both their fables and their wisdom

But colonial exploitation had created a new imperative for the colonial lords. It could no longer be truthfully acknowledged that India had a rich civilization of its own - that its philosophical and scientific contributions may have influenced European scholars - or helped in shaping the European Renaissance. Britain needed a class of intellectuals meek and docile in their attitude towards the British, but full of hatred towards their fellow citizens. It was thus important to emphasize the negative aspects of the Indian tradition, and obliterate or obscure the positive. Indians were to be taught that they were a deeply conservative and fatalist people - genetically predisposed to irrational superstitions and mystic belief systems. That they had no concept of nation, national feelings or a history. If they had any culture, it had been brought to them by invaders - that they themselves lacked the creative energy to achieve anything by themselves. But the British, on the other hand epitomized modernity - they were the harbingers of all that was rational and scientific in the world. With their unique organizational skills and energetic zeal, they would raise India from the morass of casteism and religious bigotry. These and other such ideas were repeatedly filled in the minds of the young Indians who received instruction in the British schools.

A common story in all colonized lands, and only a very few questioned this
http://members.tripod.com/~INDIA_RESOURCE/britishedu.htm

A common story in all colonized lands, and only a very few questioned this
http://members.tripod.com/~INDIA_RESOURCE/britishedu.htm

It's kind of hard to justify a "great civilizing mission" if you acknowledge that the countries you are conquering have vibrant cultures of their own ...

the 17th century explorer in me argues that "African culture has not been separate from the rest of the planets and thus you can't really use ancient artifacts as proof of any intellect"

you could just use science to show that people from the African continent are just as smart and naturally that would make the idea of an inferior culture impossible but then what would your hobby be?

"And all that came from cuntries

lol

you could just use science to show that people from the African continent are just as smart and naturally that would make the idea of an inferior culture impossible but then what would your hobby be?

Or you could do what Jared Diamond did and basically show that the success of civilizations is largely a result of geography, endowments of resources (domesticable plants and animals) and so forth, and has nothing to do with intelligence.

BTW, I assume we are talking about sub-Saharan Africa here? Or are we just discounting the Egyptians completely?

That was the point, those were the views of the time
The views of some people at the time.
Did you know that Lord Liverpool, Prime Minister of Britian 1812-1826, was one-quarter Indian by ancestry? That being the case, do you really think that he -- for example -- held such views?

As regards "cultural superiority": Notice that the now-independant Indians have chosen to keep 'Western-style' democracy (more or less) and the various technologies that were introduced under British rule, and have not shown any wish to re-legalise 'suttee' or to reintroduce 'thuggee'... so evidently there are some aspects of British culture that they do accept as superior to what they had before... ;)

what was the Aryan invasion theory about? the superiority of lighter complexion people over darker
It was a land-grab, like most invasions. The difference in skin colours, although subsequently used to help keep the conquerors' descendants and their subjects separate in the caste system, was probably coincidental.

The views of some people at the time.
Did you know that Lord Liverpool, Prime Minister of Britian 1812-1826, was one-quarter Indian by ancestry? That being the case, do you really think that he -- for example -- held such views?
.

I don't know 16% of James Watson's genes are African :p
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article3022190.ece

As regards "cultural superiority": Notice that the now-independant Indians have chosen to keep 'Western-style' democracy (more or less) and the various technologies that were introduced under British rule, and have not shown any wish to re-legalise 'suttee' or to reintroduce 'thuggee'... so evidently there are some aspects of British culture that they do accept as superior to what they had before...
They consider it superior because of the way they continually drummed into their subjects that the west was "superior" But some aspects of it might have been good to adobt, just like some aspect of eastern culture would be good for us to adobt

It was a land-grab, like most invasions. The difference in skin colours, although subsequently used to help keep the conquerors' descendants and their subjects separate in the caste system, was probably coincidental.
The Aryan invasion is also a theory, and it might never have happened

http://www.mantra.com/newsplus/aitmyth.html

The Aryan invasion is also a theory, and it might never have happened

http://www.mantra.com/newsplus/aitmyth.html

*Looks at cited site*
Shall we look at part of that discussion here?

The Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT) [see also Book Review, page 9 left column] denies the indigenous origin and evolution of the sources of India's glorious Vedic culture and heritage. Such a proposition defies common sense and available scriptural, archaeological and historical evidence. For thousands of years Hindu society has looked upon the Vedas as the fountainhead of all knowledge--spiritual and secular--and the mainstay of Hindu culture, its heritage and existence. Never have our historical or religious records questioned this fact. And now, suddenly, in the last century or so, it has been propagated that the Vedas do not belong to Hindus, they were the creation of a barbaric horde of nomadic tribes who descended upon North India and destroyed an advanced indigenous civilization. A nomadic, barbaric horde of invaders cannot by any stretch of imagination produce the kind of sublime wisdom or pure and pristine spiritual experiences of the highest order as one finds in the Vedic literature.
Tell me, can you say "biased viewpoint"? The person quoted there isn't arguing from facts, he or she is arguing from emotions...
According to quite a bit of reading that I've done on the subject (and a programme shown quite recently on BBC2 television, which I seem to recall was made in cooperation with an Indian broadcaster) the theory that the 'Aryans' entered India from outside is supported by a lot more archaeological and linguistic evidence than the Indocentric idea that they (and the ancestors of all the other Indo-Europeans) were actually indigenous to India instead... The "Aryans originated inside India" theory was invented by some Indians who wanted to make their own people seem more important, and seems to have little if any support amongst non-Indian scholars.

This is something an acquaintance did, everything bellow is in this link http://www.mootsf.org/forums/showthread.php?t=425:



The pre-history of India is a hotly disputed subject among academics. More specifically the founding of Indus Valley Civilization and Hindu culture as well as the genetic diversity of the sub-continent and how this plays into the historical development of the region has interested scholars for years.

One such theory is that the Dravidian people of Southern India once dominated the entire landmass and that these people were later civilized by a group of migrants from the Central Asian steppes who brought with them their
language, culture as well as intermingled with the natives to an extent that they established an ethnic hiearchy based on race which came to be the origins of the Hindu caste system which is said by some scholars, referencing Vedic texts, to be based on skin color.

These tribal invaders were called Aryans by scholars and were believed to be the original speakers of the language Sanskrit a language related to Indo-European.

These "Aryans" were said to be the first speakers of Proto-Indo-European (also called Indo-Aryan) a hypothesized progenitor language spoken by an original people.

Because of their alleged ability to found civilizations they were regarded as a "Master Race".


More details on the myth of the Aryan Invasion can be viewed here:

-March of the Titans- Chapter 5: Born of the Black Sea - The Indo-European Invasions (http://www.stormfront.org/whitehistory/hwr5c.htm)

The Aryan Invasion has been used to jutsify everything from British imperialism to Hitler's theories of German Supremacy.

But does this theory have historical merit, or is it just a myth?

Some scholars say no, and give reasons for why it is a appaling theory to teach as history.

Read:Myth of Aryan Invasion - by David Frawley (http://www.hindunet.org/hindu_history/ancient/aryan/aryan_frawley.html)

Excerpt:
The acceptance of these views would create a revolution in our view of history. It would make ancient India the oldest, largest and most central of ancient cultures. It would mean that the 'Vedas' are our most authentic records of the ancient world. It would also tend to validate the Vedic view that the Indo-Europeans and other Aryan peoples were migrants from India, not that the Indo-Aryans were invaders into India. Moreover, it would affirm the Hindu tradition that the Dravidians were early offshoots of the Vedic people through the seer Agastya, and not unaryan peoples.

In closing, it is important to examine the social and political implications of the Aryan invasion idea:
1. It served to divide India into a northern Aryan and southern Dravidian culture which were made hostile to each other.

2. It gave the British an excuse in their conquest of India. They could claim to be doing only what the Aryan ancestors of the Hindus had previously done millennia ago.

3. It served to make Vedic culture later than and possibly derived from Middle Eastern cultures. With the proximity and relationship of the latter with the Bible and Christianity, this kept the Hindu religion as a sidelight to the development of religion and civilization to the West.

4. It discredited not only the 'Vedas' but the genealogies of the 'Puranas' and their long list of the kings before Buddha like Rama and Krishna were left without any historical basis. The 'Mahabharata', instead of the great war, became a folk lore. In short, it discredited the most of the Hindu tradition and almost all its ancient literature. It turned its scriptures and sages into fantacies and exaggerations.

5. It served a social, political and economical purpose of domination, proving the superiority of Western culture and religion.

Such a view is not good scholarship or archeology but merely cultural imperialism. The Western Vedic scholars did in the intellectual spehere what the British army did in the political realm discredit, divide and conquer the Hindus. The compelling reasons for the AIT were neither literary nor archeological but political and religious. Such prejudice may not have been intentional but deep-seated political and religious views easily cloud and blur our thinking.

While scholars such as Frawley focus on the historical records and lack of archeological evidence for the Aryan Invasion Theory, other scholars give us further insight into the subject through genetic analysis.

If an Indo-European people from Central Asia did intermingle with the native population to the extent that Aryanists insist that they did there should be genetic evidence and infact some studies in the past have claimed to provide such evidence.

But a recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, has provided evidence concluding that no such foreign infiltration into India took place....

National Geographic article on genetic makeup of India:

http://www.sangam.org/taraki/articles/2006/images/hs6015.jpg

The Indian subcontinent may have acquired agricultural techniques and languages—but it absorbed few genes—from the west, said Vijendra Kashyap, director of India's National Institute of Biologicals in Noida.

The finding disputes a long-held theory that a large invasion of central Asians, traveling through a northwest Indian corridor, shaped the language, culture, and gene pool of many modern Indians within the past 10,000 years.

That theory is bolstered by the presence of Indo-European languages in India, the archaeological record, and historic sources such as the Rig Veda, an early Indian religious text.

Some previous genetic studies have also supported the concept.

But Kashyap's findings, published in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science, stand at odds with those results.

True Ancestors

Testing a sample of men from 32 tribal and 45 caste groups throughout India, Kashyap's team examined 936 Y chromosomes. (The chromosome determines gender; males carry it, but women do not.)

http://www.sangam.org/taraki/articles/2006/images/IndoEuropeanLanguageDiffusion.jpg

The data reveal that the large majority of modern Indians descended from South Asian ancestors who lived on the Indian subcontinent before an influx of agricultural techniques from the north and west arrived some 10,000 years ago.

Most geneticists believe that humans first reached India via a coastal migration route perhaps 50,000 years ago.

Soon after leaving Africa, these early humans are believed to have followed the coast through southern India and eventually continued on to populate distant Australia.

Peter Underhill, a research scientist at the Stanford University School of Medicine's department of genetics, says he harbors no doubts that Indo-European speakers did move into India. But he agrees with Kashyap that their genetic contribution appears small.

"It doesn't look like there was a massive flow of genes that came in a few thousand years ago," he said. "Clearly people came in to India and brought their culture, language, and some genes."

"But I think that the genetic impact of those people was minor," he added. "You'd don't really see an equivalent genetic replacement the way that you do with the language replacement."

Language, Genes Tell Different Tales

Kashyap and his colleagues say their findings may explain the prevalence of Indo-European languages, such as Hindi and Bengali, in northern India and their relative absence in the south.

"The fact the Indo-European speakers are predominantly found in northern parts of the subcontinent may be because they were in direct contact with the Indo-European migrants, where they could have a stronger influence on the native populations to adopt their language and other cultural entities," Kashyap said.

He argues that even wholesale language changes can and do occur without genetic mixing of populations.

"It is generally assumed that language is more strongly correlated to genetics, as compared to social status or geography, because humans mostly do not tend to cross language boundaries while choosing marriage partners," Kashyap said.

"Although few of the earlier studies have shown that language is a good predictor of genetic affinity and that Y chromosome is more strongly correlated with linguistic boundaries, it is not always so," he added.

"Language can be acquired [and] has been in cases of 'elite dominance,' where adoption of a language can be forced but strong genetic differences remain the lack of admixture between the dominant and the weak populations."

If steppe-dwelling Central Asians did lend language and technology, but not many genes, to northern India, the region may have changed far less over the centuries than previously believed.

"I think if you could get into a time machine and visit northern India 10,000 years ago, you'd see people … similar to the people there today," Underhill said. "They wouldn't be similar to people from Bangalore [in the south]."

Source (http://www.sangam.org/taraki/articles/2006/02-09_India_Acquired_Language.php?uid=1506)

Study being referenced by the article:

[B]A prehistory of Indian Y chromosomes: Evaluating demic diffusion scenarios

Sanghamitra Sahoo {dagger}, Anamika Singh {dagger}, G. Himabindu {dagger}, Jheelam Banerjee {dagger}, T. Sitalaximi {dagger}, Sonali Gaikwad {dagger}, R. Trivedi {dagger}, Phillip Endicott {ddagger}, Toomas Kivisild §, Mait Metspalu §, Richard Villems §, and V. K. Kashyap {dagger}, ¶, ||

{dagger}National DNA Analysis Centre, Central Forensic Science Laboratory, Kolkata 700014, India; {ddagger}Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3PS, United Kingdom; §Estonian Biocentre, 51010 Tartu, Estonia; and ¶National Institute of Biologicals, Noida 201307, India

Edited by Colin Renfrew, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom, and approved November 23, 2005 (received for review September 5, 2005)

Understanding the genetic origins and demographic history of Indian populations is important both for questions concerning the early settlement of Eurasia and more recent events, including the appearance of Indo-Aryan languages and settled agriculture in the subcontinent. Although there is general agreement that Indian caste and tribal populations share a common late Pleistocene maternal ancestry in India, some studies of the Y-chromosome markers have suggested a recent, substantial incursion from Central or West Eurasia. To investigate the origin of paternal lineages of Indian populations, 936 Y chromosomes, representing 32 tribal and 45 caste groups from all four major linguistic groups of India, were analyzed for 38 single-nucleotide polymorphic markers. Phylogeography of the major Y-chromosomal haplogroups in India, genetic distance, and admixture analyses all indicate that the recent external contribution to Dravidian- and Hindi-speaking caste groups has been low. The sharing of some Y-chromosomal haplogroups between Indian and Central Asian populations is most parsimoniously explained by a deep, common ancestry between the two regions, with diffusion of some Indian-specific lineages northward. The Y-chromosomal data consistently suggest a largely South Asian origin for Indian caste communities and therefore argue against any major influx, from regions north and west of India, of people associated either with the development of agriculture or the spread of the Indo-Aryan language family. The dyadic Y-chromosome composition of Tibeto-Burman speakers of India, however, can be attributed to a recent demographic process, which appears to have absorbed and overlain populations who previously spoke Austro-Asiatic languages.

agriculture | genetic origins | India | paternal lineages

Abstracthttp://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/103/4/843

PDF (http://www.homestead.com/wysinger/prehistory_of_indian.pdf)

It would seem by the latest evidence that Aryanism has been turned on its head.

Not only have inaccuracies in the cultural and archeological claims of the theory been revealed but now genetic theories have been refuted.

Is the theory of The Aryan Invasion of India Fact or Fiction?

Mansa's Verdict: Fiction


Related Links:

1. The Dying God: The Hidden History of Western Civilization - The Aryan Myth (http://www.thedyinggod.com/aryan.html)

2. The myth of the Aryan invasion (http://www.gosai.com/chaitanya/saranagati/html/vedic-upanisads/aryan-invasion.html)

3. Aryan invasion theory myth (http://www.mantra.com/newsplus/aitmyth.html)

4. The Harappan Civilization and Myth of Aryan "Invasion" (http://www.archaeologyonline.net/artifacts/aryan-harappan-myth.html)

I'll admit that some of the theory's older aspects -- such as the Vedic/Aryan invaders having violently overthrown the 'Harappan' culture -- are now considered shaky, but that doesn't necessarily invalidate the basic idea of a migration into India from Central Asia (such as also happened on several later, better-documented occasions).
The genetic evidence is interesting, but I'd really like to know how many of the individuals tested were from which of the castes because if the theory is correct then one would expect to find those 'Indo-European' genes that are present in today's Indo-Aryans concentrated mainly in the 'higher' castes...
However even the sources that you're quoting now seem -- from the limited attention that I've been able to give them so far -- to agree that the Indo-Aryan languages entered India from outside rather than being of indigenously Indian origin, and that they are just one [equal] branch of Indo-European rather than that family's ancestral root-stock as the Indian "Aryanism deniers" tend to claim, and I can't think of any other examples where a lnaguage became so dominant across such a wide area without some kind of invasion even if the invader's genetic contribution to the overall population was relatively slight... Can you?

I'll admit that some of the theory's older aspects -- such as the Vedic/Aryan invaders having violently overthrown the 'Harappan' culture -- are now considered shaky, but that doesn't necessarily invalidate the basic idea of a migration into India from Central Asia (such as also happened on several later, better-documented occasions).
The genetic evidence is interesting, but I'd really like to know how many of the individuals tested were from which of the castes because if the theory is correct then one would expect to find those 'Indo-European' genes that are present in today's Indo-Aryans concentrated mainly in the 'higher' castes...
However even the sources that you're quoting now seem -- from the limited attention that I've been able to give them so far -- to agree that the Indo-Aryan languages entered India from outside rather than being of indigenously Indian origin, and that they are just one [equal] branch of Indo-European rather than that family's ancestral root-stock as the Indian "Aryanism deniers" tend to claim, and I can't think of any other examples where a lnaguage became so dominant across such a wide area without some kind of invasion even if the invader's genetic contribution to the overall population was relatively slight... Can you?

I don't know I'll just have to see what scholars say in the future

Okay.
Well, just one more point about the genetic studies: The proportion of Indo-European genes in the Indian population might well have fallen since 'Vedic' times due to natural selection, because the genes that the Dravidians and other "pre-Aryan" groups had for some traits (such as skin pigmentation) were better ones for people living in India to have...